There is something I'm trying to understand.
054A: 4000 ton
054B: 6000 ton
The 054B got a nice AESA radar, but they both got the same weapon, 32 VLS and 8x slanted launcher for antiship missiles.
What 054B got more over 054A to get that 50% tonnage increase?
I don't understand. Can someone clarify?
The above post is #1,653 on page 166. This is post
#1,561 on
page 157 written explicitly to explain what displacement is and how to understand displacement changes. No comment.
Also to expand on #1561 - displacement and armament have almost nothing in common.
Spruance had 8000t full displacement compared to 4500t of Charles F Adams despite carrying almost identical armament. Lack of double helicopter hangar was a major difference but OHP managed to put a double hangar and most of the armament in a 4100t hull. Similarly Soviet Sovremenny and Udaloy classes had ~8000t full displacement without proportional increase of armament compared to 4400t Kashin class.
Soviet designs consistently placed greater amount of weapons in smaller hulls compared to western designs.
Radar is only problematic at greater elevation where stability of the hull is affected so if the radar is fixed to the superstructure rather than to a mast it can be very large and heavy without forcing greater displacement to maintain stability.
Greater displacement literally means "greater mass" but it usually means "larger hull", especially in terms of volume. Bigger hulls are better unless you are limited by port infrastructure (e.g. this is why Israel uses inefficient small designs) and hulls are also the cheapest part of modern warships, unlike in the past so savings on displacement make no sense.
Type 054B is late in terms of shipbuilding trends but that's because Type 054A which is a development of Type 054 is late 90s design built in early 2000s. PLAN ordered what essentially was an outdated design because it considered 054A to be sufficient for the mission which is "green water" ASW and general purpose patrol. Larger ships like Spruance or Udaloy were intended for blue water missions.
Within one type of ship (frigate, destroyer etc. endurance and seaworthiness drive hull size before anything else.
PLA is very efficient when it comes to using space and tonnage. So, there is no point to have a 6000 ton frigate that has exact same armament as the 4000 ton predecessor. PLA's track record has been to always improve armament over previous versions in its ships. This should also be the case this time.
You should read on the basics of ship design and naval mission requirements. They can be historical because naval warfare hasn't changed in that regards since antiquity. You'll be surprised at how little attention is devoted to weapons, especially on ships intended for ASW - which they 054B could be if previous trends are any indication.
Naval warfare, and blue-water naval warfare in particular, tends to focus on survivability before firepower. This is how it was once explained to me:
- land is the domain natural to humans so you fight the enemy more than you fight the domain
- air is the domain hostile to humans so you fight the domain more than you fight the enemy
- sea is the domain in between so you fight both the enemy and the domain equally
On land you can fight back unless you're physically destroyed. In the air you can't fight back as soon as you're hit. But at sea you can fight back as long as you can stay afloat and mobile - and that is a separate problem that doesn't exist in the other two.
Being able to take damage and stay in the fight - especially over longer periods of time, entire operations rather than individual battles - is more important at sea than anywhere else and is more important than being able to fight the enemy effectively. It may sound wrong at first but it really becomes obvious once you study historical naval campaigns. It's the maritime equivalent of "logistics trumps tactics" in land warfare. As long as your ship is afloat the enemy must expend resources to to fight it. As long as your ship is afloat it can be returned to base where it is easier to repair it and put to some kind of use than to build a new ship. Etc. etc.
Survivability matters most at sea. And survivability first means to be able to move regardless of sea state and ship condition.And second it means to be able to do so while taking more and more damage.
Naval warfare is also faster than land warfare (in terms of units fighting) but slower than air warfare. So you take time to resolve the battle but there is a hard threshold of there being a battle, unlike in land warfare that is often almost a continuous process. So you need to stay in the fight for it to be a battle at all (enemy engaged/disegaged), and you need to stay in the fight to be able to fight a battle (maintain engagement).
I think this should be sufficient to change the perspective of what "efficient" warship design is in reality as opposed to speculations of armchair admirals with degrees from Harpoon or WarThunder university.
